The Pyramid

by Henning Mankell

  The car started reluctantly and he turned towards Ystad. The last thing he saw was the light in the kitchen window. His father had a habit of sitting up for a long time in the kitchen before going to bed. If he didn't return to the studio and add yet another few brushstrokes to one of his paintings. Wallander thought about what Blomell had said earlier that evening, that loneliness was a curse of the aged. But Wallander's father lived no differently since he had grown old. He continued to paint his pictures as if nothing had changed, neither anything around him nor himself.

  Wallander was back at Mariagatan shortly after eleven o'clock. When he unlocked the front door he saw that someone had slipped a letter through the letter box. He opened the envelope and already knew whom it was from. Emma Lundin, a nurse at the Ystad hospital. Wallander had promised to call her yesterday. She walked past his building on her way home to Dragongatan. Now she was wondering if something was wrong. Why had he not called her? Wallander felt guilty. He had met her a month before. They had fallen into conversation at the post office on Hamngatan. Then they had bumped into each other a few days later at the grocery shop and after only a couple of days they had started a relationship that was not particularly passionate on either side. Emma was a year younger than Wallander, divorced with three children. Wallander had soon realised that the relationship meant more to her than to him. Without really daring to, he had started trying to extricate himself. As he stood in the hall now he knew very well why he hadn't called. He simply had no desire to see her. He put the letter down on the kitchen table and decided he had to end the relationship. It had no future, no potential. They did not have enough to talk about, and too little time for each other. And Wallander knew that he was looking for something completely different, someone completely different. Someone who would actually be able to replace Mona. If that woman even existed. But above all it was Mona's return that he dreamed of.

  He undressed and put on his old worn dressing gown. Realised again that he had forgotten to buy toilet paper and found an old telephone book that he put in the bathroom. Then he put the grocery items he had bought in Herrestad into the fridge. The phone rang. It was a quarter past eleven. He hoped that nothing serious had occurred that would make him have to get dressed again. It was Linda. It always made him happy to hear her voice.

  'Where have you been?' she asked. 'I've been calling all evening.'

  'You could have guessed,' he replied. 'And you could have called your grandfather. That's where I was.'

  'I didn't think of that,' she said. 'You never go to see him.'

  'I don't?'

  'That's what he says.'

  'He says a lot of things. By the way, he's going to fly to Egypt in few days to see the pyramids.'

  'Sounds fun. I wouldn't mind going along.'

  Wallander said nothing. He listened to her lengthy narrative about how she had spent the past couple of days. He was pleased that she had now clearly recommitted herself to a career in upholstering furniture. He assumed that Mona was not home since she would normally get irritated when Linda talked so much and for so long on the phone. But he also felt a pang of jealousy. Even though they were now divorced, he could not reconcile himself to the thought of her seeing other men.

  The conversation ended with Linda promising to meet him in Malmö and see her grandfather off for his trip to Egypt.

  It was past midnight. Since Wallander was hungry he went back to the kitchen. The only thing he could be bothered to make was a bowl of porridge. At a half past twelve he crawled into bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

  On the morning of the twelfth of December, the temperature had sunk to four degrees below zero. Wallander was sitting in the kitchen, just before seven o'clock, when the telephone rang. It was Blomell.

  'I hope I didn't wake you,' he said.

  'I was up,' Wallander said, coffee cup in hand.

  'Something occurred to me after you left,' Blomell went on. 'I'm not a policeman, of course, but I still thought I should call you.'

  'Tell me.'

  'I was simply thinking that for someone to hear the engines outside Mossby the plane must have been at a very low altitude. That should mean that even others heard it. In that way you should be able to find out where it went. And perhaps you might even find someone who heard it turn round in the air and head back. If someone, for example, heard it with a break of only several minutes, you may be able to figure out what the turning radius was.'

  Blomell was right. Wallander should have thought of it himself. But he did not say this.

  'We're already on it,' he said instead.

  'That was all,' Blomell said. 'How was your father?'

  'He told me he's taking a trip to Egypt.'

  'That sounds like a wonderful idea.'

  Wallander didn't answer.

  'It's getting colder,' Blomell concluded. 'Winter is on its way.'

  'Soon we'll have snowstorms upon us,' Wallander said.

  He went back to the kitchen, thinking about what Blomell had said. Martinsson or someone else could get in touch with colleagues in Tomelilla and Sjöbo. Maybe also Simrishamn to be safe. It might be possible to pinpoint the plane's route and destination by looking for people who were early risers and who had noticed an engine noise overhead, twice in a row if they were lucky. Surely there were still some dairy farmers around who were up at that time of day? But the question remained. What had the two men been doing on their flight? And why had the plane lacked all signs of identification?

  Wallander quickly leafed through the paper. The Labrador puppies were still for sale. But there was no house that caught his eye.

  Wallander walked in through the doors of the station a little before eight o'clock. He was wearing the sweater he reserved for days of up to five degrees below zero. He asked Ebba to arrange travel insurance for his father.

  'That has always been my dream,' she said. 'To go to Egypt and see the pyramids.'

  Everyone seems to be envious of my father, Wallander thought as he poured himself a cup of coffee and went to his office. No one even seems surprised. I'm the only one who's worried that something will happen. That he'll get lost in the desert, for example.

  Martinsson had placed a report on his desk about the accident. Wallander eyed it quickly and thought that Martinsson was still far too verbose. Half as much would have been enough. Once Rydberg had told him that that which could not be expressed in a telegram format was either poorly conceived or completely wrong. Wallander had always tried to make his reports as clear and brief as possible. He called Martinsson and told him about his conversation with Björk the day before. Martinsson seemed pleased. Then Wallander suggested a meeting. What Blomell had said was worth following up. Martinsson managed to locate Hansson and Svedberg at half past eight. But Rydberg had still not arrived. They filed into one of the conference rooms.

  'Has anyone seen Nyberg?' Wallander asked.

  Nyberg walked in at that moment. As usual, he appeared to have been up all night. His hair was standing on end. He sat in his usual seat, somewhat apart from the others.

  'Rydberg seems ill,' Svedberg said, scratching his bald spot with a pencil.

  'He is ill,' Hansson said. 'He has sciatica.'

  'Rheumatism,' Wallander corrected. 'There's a big difference.'

  Then he turned to Nyberg.

  'We've examined the wings,' the latter said. 'And washed away the fire-retardant foam and tried to puzzle the pieces of the fuselage back together. The numbers and letters had not only been painted over, they had also been scraped away beforehand. But that had only been partly successful, hence the need for paint. The people on board definitely did not want to be traced.'

  'I imagine there is a number on the engine,' Wallander said. 'And of course not as many planes are manufactured as cars.'

  'We're getting in touch with the Piper factory in the United States,' Martinsson said.

  'There are some other questions that need to be answered,' Wallander went on. 'How far can a
plane like this fly on one tank of fuel? How common are additional fuel tanks? What is the limit to the amount of petrol a plane of this type can carry?'

  Martinsson wrote this down.

  'I'll get the answers,' he said.

  The door opened and Rydberg came in.

  'I've been to the hospital,' he said curtly, 'and things always take a long time there.'

  Wallander could see that he was in pain but said nothing.

  Instead, he presented the idea of trying to find others who might have heard the engine noise. He felt a little guilty that he did not give Blomell credit for this insight.

  'This will be like in wartime,' Rydberg commented. 'When everyone in Skåne walked around and listened for planes.'

  'It's possible it won't yield anything,' Wallander said. 'But there's no harm in checking with our colleagues in nearby districts. Personally I have trouble believing it could have been anything other than a drug transport. An arranged drop somewhere.'

  'We should talk to Malmö,' Rydberg said. 'If they've noticed that the supply seems to have increased dramatically, there could be a connection. I'll call them.'

  No one had any objections. Wallander brought the meeting to a close shortly after nine o'clock.

  He spent the rest of the morning concluding work on the assault case in Skurup and presenting the findings to Per Åkeson. At lunchtime he went downtown, had the hot-dog special, and bought some toilet paper. He even took the opportunity to drop by the state-run offlicence and buy a bottle of whisky and two bottles of wine. Just as he was leaving he bumped into Sten Widén on his way in. He reeked of alcohol and looked worn out.

  Sten Widén was one of Wallander's oldest friends. They had met many years ago, united by their interest in opera. Widén worked for his father in Stjärnsund, where they had raised racehorses. They had seen each other less often the past few years. Wallander had started to keep his distance when he realised that Widén's drinking was getting out of control.

  'It's been a while,' Widén said.

  Wallander winced at his breath, which seemed to testify to many drinking bouts.

  'You know how it is,' Wallander says. 'These things go in waves.'

  Then they exchanged some neutral words. Both wanted to end the conversation as soon as possible. In order to meet under different, prearranged circumstances. Wallander promised to call.

  'I'm training a new horse,' Widén said. 'She had such a bad name I managed to get it changed.'

  'What is she now?'

  'La Trottiata.'

  Widén smiled. Wallander nodded. Then they went their separate ways.

  Wallander walked back to Mariagatan with his bags. He was back at the station at a quarter past two. Everything still seemed deserted. Wallander continued to work through his pile of paper. After the assault in Skurup came a burglary in central Ystad, on Pilgrimsgatan. Someone had broken a window in the middle of the day and emptied the house of various valuables. Wallander shook his head as he read through Svedberg's report. It was unbelievable that none of the neighbours had seen anything.

  Is this fear starting to spread even in Sweden? he wondered. The fear of assisting the police with the most elementary observations. If this is the case then the situation is far worse that I have wanted to believe.

  Wallander struggled on with the material and made notes on who should be questioned and which searches should be made in the files. But he had no illusions that they would be able to solve the burglary case without a large dose of luck or reliable witnesses' accounts.

  Martinsson walked into his office shortly before five. Wallander saw that he was starting to grow a moustache, but he said nothing.

  'Sjöbo actually did have something to say,' Martinsson began. 'A man had been out looking for a lost bull calf all night. God only knows how he thought he was going to find anything in the dark. But he called the police in Sjöbo that morning and said he had seen strange lights and heard an engine noise shortly after five.'

  'Strange lights? What did he mean by that?'

  'I've asked the Sjöbo colleagues to interview the man in more detail.

  Fridell was his name.'

  Wallander nodded.

  'Lights and engine noise. That could confirm our hypothesis about a scheduled drop.'

  Martinsson spread out a map on Wallander's desk. He pointed. Wallander saw that it was in the area that Blomell had circled.

  'Good work,' Wallander said. 'We'll have to see if it leads us anywhere.'

  Martinsson folded up the map.

  'It's terrible if it's true,' he said. 'If this really is the case then we're unprotected. If any old plane can come in across the border and drop off drugs without being sighted.'

  'We have to get used to it,' Wallander said. 'But of course I agree with you.'

  Martinsson left. Wallander left the station a little later. When he got home he cooked a real dinner for once. At half past seven he sat down with a cup of coffee to watch the news. The phone rang as the top stories were being announced. It was Emma. She was just leaving the hospital. Wallander didn't really know what he wanted. Another evening alone. Or a visit from Emma. Without being sure that he really wanted to see her, he asked if she wanted to stop by. She said yes. Wallander knew this meant that she would stay until a little after midnight. Then she would get dressed and go home. In order to steel himself for the visit he had two glasses of whisky. He had already showered before while he was waiting for the potatoes to boil. Quickly, he changed the sheets on the bed and threw the old bed-linen into the wardrobe, which was already overflowing with dirty laundry.

  Emma arrived shortly before eight. Wallander cursed himself when he heard her on the stairs. Why couldn't he put an end to it, since it had no future?

  She arrived, she smiled and Wallander asked her in. She had brown hair and beautiful eyes, and was short. He put on the kind of music he knew she liked. They drank wine and shortly before eleven they went to bed. Wallander thought of Mona.

  Afterwards they both fell asleep. Neither one of them had said anything. Just before he fell asleep, Wallander noticed a headache coming on. He woke up again when she was getting dressed, but he pretended to be asleep. When the front door had shut, he got out of bed and drank some water. Then he returned to bed, thought about Mona for a bit longer, and fell back asleep.

  The telephone started to ring deep inside his dreams. He woke immediately. Listened. The rings continued. He glanced at the clock on the bedside table. A quarter past two. That meant that something had happened. He lifted the receiver as he sat up in bed.

  It was one of the officers who worked the night shift, Näslund.

  'There's a fire on Möllegatan,' Näslund said. 'Right on the corner of Lilla Strandgatan.'

  Wallander tried to visualise that block.

  'What's burning?'

  'The Eberhardsson sisters' sewing shop.'

  'That sounds like a case for the fire brigade and a patrol unit.'

  Näslund hesitated before answering.

  'They're already there. It sounds like the house may have exploded. And the sisters live above the shop.'

  'Did you get them out?'

  'It doesn't look like it.'

  Wallander didn't need to think any further. He knew there was only one thing to do.